Fabrication and Fabrication by Amit Wolf (Editor)

FABRICATION [ TO C O N STR U CT BY AS S E M B LI N G D IVE R S E PARTS ]

AND FABRICATION [ A N

U NTR UTH F U L

STATE M E NT]

Edited by Amit Wolf S C I -AR C P R E S S

Contents

Published by SCI-Arc Press Southern California Institute of Architecture 960 East 3rd St Los Angeles, CA 90013 www.sciarc.edu

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Introduction

8

Sideman Architecture amit wolf

28

Metadesign andries van onck

42

Autonomous Translations peter testa

52

Case Studies

72

Exhibition Discussion “Pleated Shell Structures” eric owen moss + patrik schumacher

© Southern California Institute of Architecture All rights reserved. All copyright for articles, essays, images, and projects reproduced in this document remain with the respective authors and/or original publishers of the pieces. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher.

Editor: Amit Wolf Consulting Editor: Todd Gannon Copy Editors: Justine Smith, Kevin McMahon Graphic Designer: Alex Pines Printed in Canada by the Proliic Group.

Published in the United States of America.

ISBN: 978-0-9843913-1-8 Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Cover Photo: Kyle von Hasseln, Liz von Hasseln, Phantom Geometry, SCI-Arc Graduate Thesis, 2012, advisors Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser.

Introduction

While the current links between architecture and numerically controlled (NC) fabrication seem evident enough—Patrick Schumacher’s Autopoiesis of Architecture turned instantly canonical—architecture theory has not yet produced a satisfactory account of this momentous turn. The essays, drawings, and images collected in Fabrication and Fabrication offer an alternate historiographical trajectory that ties together system theory, programming, and synchronic fabrication. Contrasting narratives of digital architecture emphasizing parametric expertise, this collection inds its roots in Andries Van Onck’s “metadesign,” irst termed in 1965, which he described as, “a general, more abstract discourse. It visualizes a system composed of moving elements and parameters […] Within the possible limits of coniguration, the designer chooses those variations which better correspond to the requirements of the particular case.”1 Bound no longer by the simple dichotomy between rational and expressive form, metadesign relates to formal qualities — “impermanence and mutability, rather than the inite, the hard-set”2 — that are dynamic and vital. As Van Onck posits, this enfolding of motions (translation, rotation, relection, and dilation) is itself the cipher of form, carried by a NC utensil. Along with the surprise return of Newton’s kinematics (geometry as applied mechanics) proceeding such claims, what enabled metadesign was a convergence of interests in “smoothing” and “rounding” operations, W. H. Gres’ surface geometries, minimum extension surfaces, topology, and the mutual nonlinearity of combinatorics and linguistics.

A former student of Max Bill at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm and a critic of Tomás Maldonado, Van Onck initially enunciated architecture’s

Renzo Piano, Shell Structural Systems for the 14th Milan Triennale, 1967, studies of membrane.

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parametric and topologic interests in response to the latter’s technological

reproduction and exchange, “Sideman Architecture” promotes relays that

determinism. But metadesign also instigated other modes of thought and

might deviate from established ideas of making and might in turn trans-

practice. Complimenting then-current design paradigms such as “compo-

late into genuine moments of architecture materiality and constructability.

nenting” and “performance design,” metadesign underlies Joe Colombo’s

Indeed, the texts gathered by this volume all explore digital produc-

“Settore Attrezzato” for the 14th Milan Triennale (1968, with Pietro Derossi),

tion through the lenses of material construction. Thus SCI-Arc’s Robot

inspired by earlier attempts at metadesign at Rimini’s discothèque L’Altro

House initiative, explored in “Autonomous Translations,” seeks to advance

Mondo (Pietro Derossi, 1967), as well as Renzo Piano’s non-modular shell

architecture’s imageabilty by linking to new architectural objects and

structure of the same Triennale. A year later, the Torinese Workers Union

their materialities (for example, photo-initiated resin cured by a specially

politicized Van Onck’s original term with metadesign counter programs

rigged Stäubli robot). Zaha Hadid and Schumacher’s analogous structures

for FIAT’s Miraiori factory as well as for a series of “autonomous” schools

at SCI-Arc and at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale are an extension of

(Alberto Magnaghi, 1969-73).

Schumacher’s parametric agenda, but ones that are of interest here in that

A diversity of adumbrations and expansions on Van Onck’s original

each partakes in material construction and morphological structuring (the

theorem (which will be examined later in this volume) led to metadesign’s

four iberglass pleated shells realized at SCI-Arc, the lightweight alumi-

untimely dissipation. Still, against the splintering of metadesign into

num pleated shells for the Biennale). As evidenced by the conversation that

worlds bearing little resemblance to one another, a more important turn

closes this collection between Schumacher and Moss, the divergent visions

would come to pass. As the NC tool tracked precise automorphisms (the

caught in the intersection of digital fabrication and parametric design are

kinematic patterns related to formal transformations), so would it shift the

far from decided. Continuing their 2010 exchange, 4 Moss advances here

ield’s understanding of form. The Modernist dismissals of formalism—

the idea of a “Messi–computation” that is responsive to singular and indi-

3

the knee-jerk refusal of the “logical procedure[es] of form inding” as Van

vidualized moments within the parametric ield (Moss’ is a word play,

Onck put it—would now be replaced by a precise theory of formal values

suggested prior to the debate by Wolf Prix, which calls forth the virtuoso

which are integral to architecture’s project.

Argentinean futbolista Lionel Messi). Such production-Messi-ness dialectics,

For this reason it is possible to speak here of a theory of form that

I would propose, are at the heart of this publication.

directly tackles the attendant features of architecture’s synchronic production, and in a way that sidesteps tensions between different formal

– Amit Wolf

expressions. Considering what digital fabrication today addresses more effectively, as well as matters it might now neglect, Peter Testa’s theory of visualization and the discussion between Patrick Schumacher and Eric Owen Moss (around the former and the experiments in parametric shells) make strong, distinct claims on making and form. My own reading of the

2 Van Onck 53; revised in the present study, 34.

links between robotics, digital protocoling effects, and analog-digital relays

3 Van Onck 52; revised in the present study, 29.

led me to explore electronica and the technically ambiguous, rather than the simply machinic. Using models suggested by electroacoustic music

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1 Andries Van Onck, “Metadesign,” Edilizia moderna 85 (1965): 53; revised in the present study, trans. Amit Wolf, 32.

4 Eric Owen Moss, “Parametricism and Pied Piperism, Responding to Patrik Schumacher,” Log 21: 81-7.

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